


Where Loyalty Lies

by Fairleigh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Character Death, Darkfic, Deception, Loss of Trust, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-14 01:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/pseuds/Fairleigh
Summary: Eli discovers the hard way that when the choice is between himself and the Chiss, Thrawn will always choose the Chiss.





	Where Loyalty Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).

If Lieutenant Commander Eli Vanto had been piloting that vessel, he would have died. That he didn’t and survived was no thanks to Thrawn.

“We know that the Grysk wish to extract a highly placed covert operative on Csilla,” Thrawn explained, “but we do not know their reasons. This operative is a double agent who has been feeding the Grysk misinformation; he says he believes his cover has been blown. Whether or not this is true, we owe it to him for his service to move him to a safe location before the Grysk can come to collect him.”

Eli knew all this already. “What I don’t understand is — why me? Any CDF officer could be this person’s glorified chaperone.”

Thrawn reached out and rested the palm of his hand against the side of Eli’s face. His thumb stroked idly back and forth along the curve of Eli’s cheekbone. “He insisted upon you personally, and I saw no reason not to oblige. Perhaps he has heard the rumors regarding our … association. Or perhaps he just wants to see a human up close.”

Eli chuckled at that. Humans weren’t exactly rare, so he suspected that the reason was closer to the former of Thrawn’s two options …

… especially since, after Thrawn’s recovery from the shameful debacle on Lothal, the rumors had started being true.

“You’re just embarrassed about those other rumors,” Eli said as he leaned forward to brush his lips playfully against Thrawn’s. “You know, the ones about how anyone who takes an alien as a lover can’t possibly be completely loyal to his own kind anymore?”

Eli chuckled again. Thrawn didn’t share his laughter, but then, he never did. His red eyes, though, had never blazed brighter as they renewed their kisses. Eli would have to leave to make planetfall on Csilla soon, but not quite yet. They still had time.

~*~*~

When Eli woke up, both the covert operative and Navigator Vah’nya were dead. Thrawn had ordered the shot which had killed them.

Vah’nya’s preternatural intuition and powers of precognition were what qualified her as a CDF Navigator. They were also how she’d sensed the danger to Eli and how she’d mind-tricked the covert operative in agreeing to accompany her, and not Eli, as he’d demanded, off-planet.

They’d barely escaped Csilla’s gravity well before Thrawn blew their vessel to so much space dust.

Had Vah’nya foreseen her own end as well? Had she believed herself so easily expendable? Eli didn’t know, and now, he couldn’t ask her himself. That fact hurt; it really, really hurt.

“He was playing us,” Thrawn explained, “but he was too paranoid for anyone to get close. He suspected we were on to him, and of course he was correct. Sending you was the only way we could get him to agree to come out into the open where we could be assured of his destruction. He was in possession of intelligence which would have brought down the Chiss Ascendancy. We could not allow it to fall into the hands of the Grysk.”

“And you were willing to sacrifice me in order to get to him,” Eli said. It wasn’t a question.

“You couldn't be told. He would have read the truth in your body language, of course.”

“Of course,” Eli echoed. He still felt numb. There was more to this story, he knew, more that Thrawn would not tell him, but Eli couldn’t bring himself to care. The bottom line? His lover had no compunctions against sacrificing him for the greater good of the Chiss Ascendancy, and his best friend had no compunctions about slipping a sedative into his drink in order to take him off of the proverbial sabacc table.

Vah’nya hadn’t even talked to him about things first or tried to explain. She hadn’t even said goodbye.

And as for Thrawn …?

“My people must always come before my personal commitments,” Thrawn said. If he’d been human, Thrawn would have tacked on a perfunctory _I’m sorry, Eli._ But he wasn’t sorry, and he wasn’t human, and every terrible thing Eli had ever heard people whisper — or state quite loudly indeed — about how an alien like Thrawn’s first loyalty would always be to his kind reverberated in Eli’s mind.

He should have felt resentful; he should have felt loathing. Vah’nya had been a loyal friend, and for that, she had died. He should have ended his _commitment_ to Thrawn. But Thrawn was Thrawn, and this was Thrawn being Thrawn. Many Imperial officers would have sacrificed subordinates under similar conditions. This was the same Thrawn Eli had fallen in love with. And in spite of everything, Eli still loved him.

Just. He didn’t completely trust him with his life, or with his love, anymore. Perhaps he never would again.


End file.
